


Hot summer nights, mid July;

by kotaro_kun



Series: It's Nice to Have a Friend [5]
Category: IT (2017), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Childhood Friends, F/M, Falling In Love, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Growing Up Together, M/M, Pining, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Soft Richie Tozier, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, beauty exalting, eddie was in love with richie too okay? okay, i think this is very poetic, richie is smitten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21818614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kotaro_kun/pseuds/kotaro_kun
Summary: "They knew each other for so long and Richie had thought that he knew everything he had to know about the younger: an annoyed, full of anxieties, fucking impetuous, daring, fierce, a little too bold and way too fucking brave five foot three boy.But now he was facing this — for lack of a better compliment — angel, all bouncing curls and softly glowing skin, tender and mint leaf-sweet. The afternoon light was pouring down on him making him gold-dappled, illuminating his face with peachy shades, got him looking like those photos in the magazines that Beverly had, all soft and smooth. Maybe even a little pearly."*Or Richie realizes he's way too deep in love with his best friend.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: It's Nice to Have a Friend [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551595
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42





	Hot summer nights, mid July;

_“My math teacher once said that if someone stares_ _  
__at you openly, it means they think you are_ _  
__attractive. But if someone stares at you when_ _  
__you’re not looking, it means_ _  
__they are in love with you.”_

* * *

Richie was fifteen when he realized he was _in_ love with Eddie. 

Or maybe he had been in love with him all along and just noticed at that moment — a turning point, but this is when things started to change. 

They were at the Quarry, just the two. Everyone had gone home already; their mothers were at the kitchen waiting for the noise of the front door opening while they cooked dinner and their fathers were at the TV room, feet up in the dark — faces splashed with violet, red, orange, blue, green, or in their office, it depends on the father you’re talking about. But the mom’s are always in the kitchen. And always waiting for their children.

Eddie didn’t have a dad watching the news, neither a mother in the kitchen, but a _Ma_ sprawled in the reclining chair watching some Game Show, their food consisting of those TV dinners that she just throwed in the oven, waiting for him at the empty table. 

Richie didn’t too. They all knew. His mom was getting started on the boxed wine in her room and his dad was still at the office pretending to be too busy to deal with his family. It was okay for Richie, he maybe had gotten into his rebellious phase, he didn’t know, all that he knew was that these days he prefered to stay awake at night during the weekends so he could sleep all day and not have to see his parents during the day. Even if he started dreading the mondays. 

But today Eddie didn’t have a TV dinner waiting at home for him. His mom had went out to play Bingo at the church _“she’ll be there until eight, I think, but I should get home a little early just in case,”_ , Eddie had whispered to him, Richie’s wrist grasped in his tiny fingers when he had started to get up and head to his bike. Richie just shrugged. He could come home at midnight and his parents wouldn’t notice anyway. 

So it’s summer, is five o’clock but the sun is still shining, like it’s afternoon. They were seated side by side while Richie smoked and Eddie laughed at something he had said. He doesn’t remember what, his mouth always running a mile per minute, sometimes he started sentences without even knowing where there were going. He usually didn’t care but at this moment he did. He wanted to know what had made his best friend laugh like that, really laugh, the one that catched him by surprise and made his nose wrinkle and his eyes look away. 

The afternoon light was pouring down on him making his skin gold-dappled, illuminating his face with peachy shades, got him looking like those photos in the magazines that Beverly had, all soft and smooth. Maybe even a little pearly. 

His long lashes casted shadows on his cheekbones but Richie could still see the cocoa-powder freckles that he would squeezy every chance he got because he was so _cute cute cute, Eds._ He usually did that to annoy the younger, but right now, with both of them quiet and a cigarette on his fingers — usually his priority — Richie got the sudden urge to touch. But not in the harsh way, because boys could touch boys if it was to shove or to bump or to hurt. But they didn’t touch to cherish. The delicate touch you saved for precious, pretty things not your best friend. Your best _male_ friend.

But even if you couldn’t touch you could look at pretty things, like Stan did with his birds or Ben did with Beverly; like the expensive jewelry in the store’s windows he would pass on his way to the arcade. So he looked. 

Eddie was too busy running his hand on his hair, again and again, because he had let it grow more than he was used to and it was starting to curl, every loop had a bit of sunlight in it, dyed blond from the summer sun; it looked so soft. Eddie told him once, that it was because his Ma made him take vitamins for hair strength, and made him use women’s hair products since he was a kid, because the smell of the men’s was too strong for him and now he was used to it, but Richie had saw Eddie and Beverly in the farmacy smelling containers in the beauty section, saw the smaller’s eyes get wide and shine when he smelled a pink one and the next day his hair was smelling as sweet as the strawberries they went picking last week. 

His cheeks and nose was cherry-red from the day riding their bikes under the sun and then splashing and swimming in the water. The summer breezy against their bodies and the sun cutting sharp on their shoulders before Eds decided that he wasn’t going to get sun-dizzied and went to seat in the rocks, stretching like a cat while Mike picked small dandelions and daisies and placed them in the knots of his hair when he wasn’t paying attention. Richie vaguely remembers thinking how right Eddie looked at that moment. He belonged on Summer. Was born in it. Violets for Spring; Eddie for summer.

Slowly Eddie’s face turned towards him — probably realizing the lack of chatter, bambi eyes of the most rich chocolate color he had ever seen, dancing with oranges, and reds, and yellows, the fading blue sky — all together, as if they were made of liquid sunsets, and now Richie understood why the down of the sun had been going around for a billion years and people still took their time to stare at its colors. He was still smiling a bit, the deep dimples on his cheek proof enough of it; _was he still smiling because of me?_ , he asked himself because if yes he could feel his heart speeding up. Eddie was content. Happy. Dreamlike. 

They knew each other for so long and Richie had thought that he knew everything he had to know about the younger: an annoyed, full of anxieties, fucking impetuous, daring, fierce, a little too bold and way too fucking brave five foot three boy. 

But now he was facing this — for lack of a better compliment — angel, all bouncing curls and softly glowing skin, tender and mint leaf-sweet. And suddenly he was hyper aware of his huge front teeth, his ridiculous coke-bottle glasses, his unbrushed hair and just about every pimple puberty had smacked on his face. 

_How did_ this _come out of_ that _woman?_

“Why you’re staring?” Eddie asked frowning, and Richie realized that he had, quite literally, been lost in his friends eyes. 

For a moment he just blinked, unsure of what to do. Should he just blurt a joke? Should he say an excuse? Talk about Eddie’s mom? He didn’t know. He wasn’t used to tip-toeing around his best friend and he had no desire to start now. 

“There’s grass all over your hair,” He lied, there was no grass, only little flowers but most of it was gone with the incessant finger-brushing. Even so Eddie frowned and stucked both his hands in his hair, shooking the strands from the roots, making some curls fall on his forehead. Richie suddenly felt like he might faint.

"Is it gone?" Eddie asked, brushing the little hairs back into place, but just managing to look even more cute. _Cute_. Oh my god.

“Yep,” He got up as fast as his spinning mind allowed him. “Let’s get the hecky-heck out of here, it’s full of bugs. They pass diseases, right Eds? Wouldn’t want you getting sick in the middle of summer.”

He walked to their bikes, smoking the rest of his cigarette and then throwing it in the grass, faintly hearing Eddie in the background grumble about forest fires caused by tossed cigarettes. He got up on his bike and didn’t waited for his friend, before pedaling down the street, into the city, his hawaiian shirt blowing behind him with the speed he was going, no doubt Eds was having trouble following behind but he didn’t dare look back, least he sees something that makes his stomach tingle even more.

On the roof of his room that night he decided that he wouldn’t do anything about it. It was definitely an hormonal thing or some shit. By tomorrow Eddie would be back to being his best friend, and they would go back to bickering and shoving each other.

Little did he know that once he saw Eddie as beautiful as he did he would never be able to forget it, that his eyes would always be looking for him; his hands touching the younger more than ever, fingers closing around freckled dusted skinny elbows, arms thrown over shoulders, hands resting on thighs; always training his ears to capture the timbre of his laugh — that for Richie was just like smoking a whole pack of cigarettes, leaving him light and fuzzy. That he would spend nights looking at his ceiling, thinking about what jokes he could make to entice a laugh out of his friend. That he would never go back to being just Eddie Spaghetti. That Richie would never look at him with indifference again. 

The red sky was already touching the tips of the trees — the way Richie wished to be touching the tips of Eddie’s fingers. Or his rose-bud lips with his chapped dry ones —, when Richie climbed down from the roof, still thinking that it was temporary, whatever this was, and that tomorrow everything would go back to being normal again. Little did he know. 


End file.
